Dear Info-Marketing Entrepreneur, You hold in your hands an exclusive preview of my new book, Ready Fire Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat. You are one of the first persons - besides my copy editors and my publisher - to see these ideas. In fact, certain executives at the publishing company didn’t think it was a good idea to release any excerpts of the book before the official release date of Jan. 4, 2008. However, I overruled them. I wanted you to have this because it introduces an important idea about entrepreneurship that we will be talking about at the conference. In one sense, this book is the end of many months of brainstorming, writing, and editing. But really it’s the culmination of my four decades as an entrepreneur and business builder. I’ve been involved with starting and growing businesses for more than 25 years. During that time I’ve learned a lot, including how to overcome the obstacles that every business, no matter what the industry, will face throughout its life. Just as important, I’ve learned how to recognize and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way every day. I’ve put everything I’ve learned into this book. The result is a step by step guide to taking your business from start-up to a $100 million, even $300 million or more company. As you will see the importance of speed…how to jump start a stalled business…and why selling is your first business priority are some of the major themes mentioned in these first couple of chapters. But that’s only three of the dozens of important secrets and discoveries that are contained in Ready Fire Aim. In fact, I would not be surprised if you find something of value that you can implement in your own business on every page. Enjoy. My only regret is that you have to wait until January to read the rest of it! Best Regards, Michael Masterson To get your own copy of Ready, Fire, Aim which recently hit #1 on Amazon.com click here now! Introduction The Very Best Job in the World Vanessa dropped two plates of eggs and bacon on our table, a stainless steel and Formica heirloom of another generation. “Got any hot sauce?” Harry asked. “You gonna use it if I bring it?” she countered. Harry looked up. Vanessa was smiling. Harry smiled back. “You’re kinda cute,” he said. “Don’t kid yourself, honey,” Vanessa replied. “I’m very cute.” She grabbed a bottle of Tabasco from a nearby table, slapped it down in front of Harry, and sauntered away. Harry watched her backside as she disappeared into the kitchen. “I feel like I’m in an old movie,” he said, salting his eggs. “The Green Owl is old Florida,” I told him. “It’s not trendy, but it works.” 1 Harry looked around. Every table was full, and every stool around the central counter was occupied. Most of the crowd was dressed in working clothes – jeans or uniforms or business suits. And everybody seemed to know everyone else. “A local place,” he said. “That’s the way I like it.” We began to eat. The eggs were good. The bacon was crisp, the coffee hot. We talked about business. Harry, a career diplomat with USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development),(cid:1) had just begun a new post in Central America. He talked about his efforts to master Spanish, and about the challenge of motivating a staff that had been there before him, would be there after him, and was used to doing things “the old way.” “And since they are government employees, it’s nearly impossible to fire them,” I added, sympathetically. He asked me about my Latin American business interests – a real estate brokerage in Panama, a publishing venture in Buenos Aires, and a residential resort development in Nicaragua. (cid:1) USAID is the independent government agency that provides non-military economic and humanitarian foreign aid. 2 “They are all doing very well,” I told him. Then Harry leaned forward and asked the question I have been asked a hundred times in my career, the question I always have trouble answering: “You know, I’ve never really understood – what exactly do you do?” A Question They Never Stop Asking I shook my head and smiled. “You’ve known me for 25 years,” I teased. “How could you not know what I do for a living? I know what you do!” “But you … you do so many damn things. You are involved with a business in Ireland that publishes a travel and retirement magazine, a business in Baltimore that sells vitamins, a business in London that sells academic books to universities – and I don’t know what else!” Harry had only scratched the surface. I have an active interest in the largest financial newsletter businesses in both the U.S. and England, a company that teaches people how to make career changes, about two dozen real estate businesses (including two that are in the $50+ million level), a public relations business, several health-oriented companies, businesses in France, Australia, 3 Germany, Spain, South Africa, and India. I have owned wholesale, retail, and direct-to-consumer businesses selling everything from perfume to televisions to horoscopes, and I even own a few small restaurants and hotels and oil wells. Yet I spend most of my time writing. Harry was right to be confused. I sometimes have trouble understanding it myself. I do know this: I have what must be the greatest job in the world! I work when I want, where I want, and with whom I want, doing only what I want to do. If that isn’t the definition of the best job in the world, what is? The Four W’s of Career Satisfaction: Demanding the Best From Your Job They say that the three most important questions in life are: • What you do • Where you do it • With whom I think that is true. To have a great career, you must choose work that gives you satisfaction, a working environment that is pleasing, and coworkers who make it easier for you to achieve your objectives. 4 To those three W’s, I’d add a fourth: when. As in, when you work and when you don’t. Being in charge of the hours you work and the vacations you take is an important element in the mix that makes up the perfect working lifestyle. This is a book about business, about taking your business to the next level. But it is also a book about personal power and satisfaction, about changing the way you work so that you can become increasingly in charge of the four W’s of career satisfaction and thus be able to say, “I have the greatest job in the world!” World-Class Travel Paid for by My Businesses I love to travel, and my job as a consultant to the many businesses I’m involved in takes me all around the world on a regular basis. In the past year, I have spent a week in a 24-bedroom château in Normandy, and a week in a luxury hotel in Paris, and in Madrid, and in Rome. I enjoyed several memorable days in Rome, New York, Buenos Aires, and Dublin, not to mention the time I spent in our second home overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Nicaragua. When I travel with my wife, I spend the bulk of my day having fun visiting parks and shops and 5 museums and going to concerts, dance performances, and the theater. When I travel by myself, I block out several hours every day to indulge myself in small museums and art galleries and take advantage of the health club and spa amenities offered by the hotels I stay in. And because my business interests are international, travel is largely first-class and paid for by one of the companies I consult with. My office is more a grown-up version of a boy’s treehouse than it is a workplace, complete with a personal gym, jiu jitsu room, billiard table, movie screening room, and art studio. It is located 1.1 miles (an eight-minute jog) from my main home, which is in one of America’s best cities on the Atlantic Ocean in South Florida. So if you were to ask me “Where do you work?”, my answer would be “In all the best places.” Being in Control of Your Time My working time used to be directed by other people and measured by a time clock. At the Rockville Centre Car Wash back in 1962, we were penalized a half-hour’s pay for each minute of tardiness. Later, as a schlepper at King Cullen’s Warehouse, my high school friends and I worked whatever shift we were told to work, and we were happy to have the job. Later still, as an assistant 6 teacher during my college and Peace Corps days and as an employee of a publishing company in Washington, D.C., I was told when to arrive at work and when I could leave. These mandates, I soon learned, were official minimums. If I wanted to advance, I had to follow the unpublished requirements that were kept in my boss’s brain – which were usually an hour earlier and two hours later than the official hours. When I went into business for myself, I began with the happy illusion that I could work the hours I wanted. But I soon discovered the truth about entrepreneurship: that the freedom it gives you is usually the freedom to work twice as long and twice as hard as you ever did, even if you thought you were working too much for someone else. Nowadays, though, I don’t work that hard. In fact, most days I don’t do any “work work” until about four o’clock in the afternoon, and then I quit at about five or five-thirty. You know what I mean by “work work.” It’s the work that you would not do unless you were getting paid to do it. For me, “work work” is answering e-mails. Why? Because that is where and how the people in all the businesses I work with get to “tell me” about any difficult problems they may be having. I learned, long ago, that if you refuse to help smart people solve their business problems, they solve them 7